Mária Modok (the wife of Béla Czóbel) was a student of István Réti in the Academy of Fine arts and the Independent School of Nagybánya (Baia Mare, Romania). Her career as an artist started with plein air pieces in the early 1920s. She visited Paris several times in the 1930s, and she pursued studies in private schools here. Her composition entitled 'Bank of the Seine with a Bridge' dates back to this period. In the mid-1930s she produced landscapes and large-sized townscapes in Szentendre (Stairs in Szentendre, Kígyó Street in Szentendre). At her first one-artist exhibition held in the Tamás Gallery in l935 she displayed pictures of mothers and children of the proletariat depicted with marked social sensitivity. She also painted self-portraits, portraits and double portraits in this period. The choice of themes of her works changed following her marriage to Béla Czóbel in l940. Instead of the large-scaled figurative compositions, she would now paint smaller-sized still-lifes and landscapes. Her pictures inspired by flowers, fruits and the objects surrounding her testify to her loving relationship with these objects. As a result of her sojourns in Paris that became more frequent from the 1950s the lifestyle and artistic perception of Mária Modok gradually changed. Her living in two places, i.e. in Paris and in Szentendre, made it possible for her to get acquainted with the prominent figures of near-past and contemporary Parisian art. The harmony of pastel shades began to gain dominance in her small paintings displaying colours that became apparently lighter. She also discovered new themes: pigeon feathers, waterside landscapes, celestial bodies, and she depicted these in small-sized series of variations. In these series she was more preoccupied with the problems of abstract painting.

In her townscapes she experimented with geometric reduction. Through the abstraction of the motifs of nature she arrived at non-figurative art, although in many of her paintings she stopped at the threshold of abstraction. The unique way of abstracting from the inspiring spectacle gradually gained a more and more important role in her art characterised by a sensitive colour scheme that is associated with the lyrical trend of postimpressionism.